Former President Bill Clinton delivered one of the Democratic National Convention’s biggest speeches Wednesday night. Our live blog is below. (Also see the related article and prepared text of the remarks.)

OK, getting close. Some background: Former President Bill Clinton takes the stage on a night when Democrats took the gloves off in their fight against Mitt Romney and his Republican allies. The popular former president is expected to add his voice to that chorus of Romney critics, while painting Mr. Obama as an advocate for the little guy. The tenor is a sharp break from the more uplifting themes of Tuesday night, but just what many of the partisans in the arena are itching to hear.

It’s easy to forget that in 1996 Clinton could brag – and did brag – of 10 million new jobs under his watch, over half of them high-wage jobs. Obama has just 4 million to show, and that’s just since the economy stabilized in 2010.

Few Democrats parry the Republican argument against their party as well as Bill Clinton, and he shows it again Wednesday night by telling the crowd that the party doesn’t want Americans to be on their own. He cites jobs numbers putting Democrats ahead of Republicans on that score over recent decades.

On a night devoted to partisan warfare, Bill Clinton ticks off all the things past Republican presidents did to help the country, painting today’s conservatives as more out-of-step than earlier partisans.

Clinton says: “I actually never learned to hate them” the way the far right hates Obama. Clinton’s discussion of political cooperation seems a little out of place in the midst of a 2012 campaign that’s being described as a knife fight in many quarters.

After a few hours of nasty zingers against the GOP, Bill Clinton is pouring on the bipartisan charm as thick as molasses – while criticizing Republicans for attacking anyone willing to work across the aisle. “Nobody’s wrong all the time, and a broken clock is right twice a day,” Clinton says as he implores people to work together.

In pitching President Obama as someone willing to forgive a grudge, Clinton even acknowledges the nasty primary fight between the president and his wife, Hillary Clinton, telling the crowd, “heck” Obama even nominated her to be his Secretary of State.

Blaming Republicans for gridlock and bickering is a reminder of how much things have changed since 1996, when Clinton vowed not to attack his then-opponents, Bob Dole and Jack Kemp. “I will not attack them personally, or permit others to do it in this party if I can prevent it. My fellow Americans, this must be a campaign of ideas, not a campaign of insults,” he said at the time. Of course, Clinton was sitting pretty with a growing economy.

It wasn’t necessarily expected that Mr. Clinton would spend so much of his time decrying the alleged harshness and partisanship of the Republicans, rather than focusing on how good the economy was during his tenure. No doubt that will come.

President Obama may not have watched the Republican convention, but Bill Clinton did and he offered words of praise: “They looked good. They sounded good. They convinced me they all love their families and their children.”

He said he even started to believe they mean to keep their commitments, before sticking the knife in — “We’ve just got to make sure the American people know what those commitments are.”

Bill Clinton’s suggestion that Republicans blew up the economy all by themselves deserves a little scrutiny. For one thing, of course, Democrats were in charge in Congress prior to the blowup. More fundamentally, the Clinton administration was leading the charge for greatly expanding homeownership in the 1990s. And also pushed for banking and financial de-regulation, or at least light regulation.

Bill Clinton distills the unease in the country with a simple, sympathetic line: “A lot of Americans are still angry and frustrated about this economy.” He then compares the malaise to his own tenure, with a silver lining for voters still scared about the economy.

Clinton puts Obama’s hurdles in perspective, by telling the crowd, “No one could have fully repaired all the damage he found.” He goes on to remind the crowd again about the foundation Obama is laying for future economic growth.

Clinton’s comment that not even he could have fixed the economy in the time President Obama has had appears designed in part to make it clear he’s not trying to praise his record at Mr. Obama’s expense.

The stimulus could use a cheerleader, and Bill Clinton rises to the challenge by lauding the tax cuts in it and citing the 4.5 million private-sector jobs that have been created since it was passed. He also makes a point of hailing the rescue of domestic automakers Chrysler and General Motors.

Fact-check: Bill Clinton is correct to say that the stimulus package included tax cuts for 95% of Americans, between the Making Work Pay tax credit and the Alternative Minimum Tax patch for middle-income families. Another fact-check: Democrats rarely focused on this as pointedly as he did tonight.

Clinton was always measuring his jobs successes with charts and graphs. They always seemed to have lines that just went up and up. Now he’s got to do additions and subtractions that make it more complicated.

This speech is quite reminiscent of Clinton’s talks during his presidency, when he mixed folksy points with detailed policy analysis. It highlights how much his style contrasts with that of President Obama, who specializes in soaring oratory.

Clinton seems to relish a challenge, and he rolls up his sleeves in defense of the president’s new health care law: more than 3 million young people are insured for the first time; millions of seniors are receiving preventative care, soon the insurance companies will have millions of new customers (many of whom are middle-class customers with pre-existing conditions who couldn’t get health insurance)

“Are we better off because President Obama fought for health-care reform? You bet we are.”

This speech is quite reminiscent of Clinton’s talks during his presidency, when he mixed folksy points with detailed policy analysis. It highlights how much his style contrasts with that of President Obama, who specializes in soaring oratory.

It’s interesting to hear Clinton defend Obama’s huge health-care initiative. After his own first-term debacle on health care, Clinton never really went after it again. In 1996 he was pushing health-care coverage for the unemployed.

Mr. Clinton is only the latest and most emphatic of the speakers to hit back against the Republicans’ argument that Americans are not better off than they were four years ago. The Democrats’ task was complicated recently by Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s apparent suggestion that the Americans were not better off, comments he quickly backed away from.

Republicans had a field day with the Obama health-care law’s Medicare savings in 2010, and the GOP even won an advantage among seniors in the 2010 election because of their worries over those cuts. Clinton’s discussion – and the whole Democratic debate over the Medicare cuts – is aimed at regaining the confidence of seniors.

Another line from Clinton that 2012 Democrats may wish they thought up themselves: Are we better off because President Obama fought for health care? You bet we are. And his full-throated defense of the health law’s Medicare cuts — and benefits for seniors — is also resonating more strongly than the Obama administration’s arguments on this. Now that he’s moving on to the Medicare overhaul arguments, equally strongly. And… buckle up, he’s going to talk about Medicaid, focusing on an area that usually doesn’t get as much attention as Medicare does. “You won’t be laughing when I finish telling you this,” he says of a wonky policy issue, block-granting.

By far the most enthusiastic response so far in the hall is for the Paul Ryan comment: “It takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did.” As we noted earlier, that’s a reference to Mr. Ryan accusing Mr. Obama of raiding Medicare by $716 billion, despite using those same savings in his budget.

Bill Clinton’s attacks on Mitt Romney and his policies are doubly effective because Romney himself often lauds the former president in stump speeches. So, Romney and his team will have a hard rebutting these attacks, given how much time they spent building Clinton up.

Bill Clinton is now attacking the Republicans criticism that President Obama allegedly weakened the work requirements under the welfare program. Democrats, and neutral fact-checkers, have pushed back on this attack. Democrats hope Clinton has particular credibility in this area, since he’s the one who signed the welfare overhaul in 1996.

Clinton is honing in on welfare, a hot-button issue on the campaign trail that got revived this week with a skeptical GAO report that suggested the White House should seek congressional approval for changes. The former president is the best person to try to neutralize the issue for Mr. Obama, since, as he points out, ”This is personal to me.” (He signed the bill that Congress passed in 1996 instituting work requirements.)

Clinton – who was always bragging about paying for all his relatively tiny tax cuts – is well positioned to send out to criticize the deficit impact of Romney’s massive new tax cuts. Obama might benefit from displaying more of Clinton’s budget-consciousness.

And it’s over. Barack Obama and Bill Clinton embrace on the stage, a symbolic gesture meant to symbolize the unity between the last two Democratic presidents – not to mention a photo that will run on the front page of most newspapers in the country.

Some final thoughts on Clinton’s speech: One potential problem with Clinton’s focus on 1990s-style fiscal rectitude is that he doesn’t connect it up with jobs and kitchen-table economics – and it’s hard to anymore. In the 1990s, Clinton’s people always warned that the “reckless” tax cuts of the Republicans would deepen deficits and overheat the economy, leading to higher interest rates. Now we have huge annual deficits under President Obama (he argues he inherited them from Bush), yet interest rates are low and heading lower – and job growth remains sluggish. So Clinton’s whole theory seems a little shaky. Still, Clinton’s budget talk is a comforting reminder to many voters who prospered back then, at a time of (briefly) balanced federal budgets.

If Democrats needed a shot in the arm, Bill Clinton sure brought the house down. If Tuesday was about reminding voters of the excitement that surrounded Barack Obama’s first White House race, tonight presented voters with a sharper contrast with Mitt Romney and his Republican allies. But Clinton dipped his knives in honey and offered voters the most comprehensive rebuttal of GOP attacks on the president this year.

The greatest takeaway may prove the picture of presidents Obama and Clinton embracing on stage, a shot that sets the stage for the president’s acceptance speech Thursday night.

OK, that’s it for the live blog tonight. We’ll be back again Thursday night for more coverage of the major convention speeches through the night, including the remarks from Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama. Thanks again for joining us.

Comments (5 of 139)

After finding reading the PPACA I find that your argument is not only not implemented yet but will not be implemented. So your information is useless and it is not I that need to read it but it is truly you that need to read it. . I can only determine that because your hear spreading lies you must not actually be a Nurse but you must be a paid FUD Spreader. To set you strait the panel speak of is only mentioned in the CLASS Act and as of "October 2011 the Obama administration announced it was unworkable and would be dropped" So thank you for taking the time to make stupider but it really backfired this time so yes go to bed and sleep well knowing you will be covered :) and have a little faith and a lot of hope because Obama is really doing a great job and if your having trouble where you work get another job there are many available.

1:16 am September 7, 2012

I do Understand wrote:

But your making predictions based on something that has not even been implemented yet. So who is posting rhetoric? Hmm!

12:38 am September 7, 2012

Anonymous wrote:

Yes the freezes may be temporary but real google it.. Most of what you see posted are for extended care facilities home care skilled nursing facilities not much hospitals due to freezes..READ the PPACA document please..otherwise it's all just rhetorical back n forth..good night and God bless..read the source..

12:17 am September 7, 2012

Anonymous wrote:

Each state has indigent funding..and in order to manage care to plan oversight of funds there will always be criteria to substantiate what services are reasonable And necessary..at this time it is between the doc and the ins company..under PPACA it will be a panel...hmmm..I know what I would prefer for my loved ones..there are funding sources presently who will absorb costs for non paying cases or the hosp write them off..

12:14 am September 7, 2012

BTW wrote:

A lot of hospitals are expanding! Mostly ones that have a good solid business plan in place and don't rely on corruption. and if there is a hiring freeze you would have a hard time selling that idea to monster.com or Dice.com because they are seeing an increase in medical career jobs not a decrease as you would have us believe.

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